Visalia's MMA Gear at the Sequoia Mall is seen. / Juan Villa

Eddie Aguirre knew he had something special the first time he sold mixed martial arts gear.

Just minutes after purchasing the gear in bulk to receive a discount, he had nearly sold out of it in the parking lot on the way to his car.

Seven years later, 34-year-old Aguirre owns the family- and fan-friendly Visalia’s MMA Gear, the only MMA store in Tulare County. He says the closest competition — using the word “competition” loosely — is more than 80 miles away in Bakersfield.

If there’s a question about MMA gear, equipment, local fights or the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Aguirre is the man to talk to locally. And just 10 years ago he didn’t know anything about any martial art.

Getting into the game

Before he was known as the MMA store guy, Aguirre began to make a name for himself as a teenager growing up in the streets of Visalia, but it wasn’t for anything he would ever be proud of now.

Living the gang life as a 14-year-old sent him to the California Youth Authority, which now is called the California Division of Juvenile Justice, home to the state’s most serious youth offenders.

Four years and a month later he was out, only to be sent to prison two months later. It wasn’t until 2003, when he was released from prison, that his life began to take a turn for the positive.

It was professional MMA fighter Darren Crisp that helped start the change by introducing him to the Central Valley Martial Arts gym in Visalia. Crisp was Aguirre’s neighbor and friend at the time.

“To be honest, it’s never even crossed my mind. I was just helping out a friend so he could get into shape and get him out of that life. It changed for the good and he’s doing what he’s doing now,” Crisp said. “Now he’s been able to come back and help me out with sponsorships. He helps me with things like my shorts. It’s a blessing that he changed his life and is now helping others.”

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Aguirre was hooked after just one Brazilian jiu-jitsu class. He began to attend class every day and began to meet a whole new crowd of people that would help him stay away from the lifestyle he had previously been living.

“In the beginning, I did think I was going to learn to hurt some people, but when you get into it, you get humbled right away,” Aguirre said. “When you’re fresh into it, you’ll go in there and think you’re the best because you’ve been in some street fights and knocked some guys out, but that was with guys who didn’t know how to fight. When you go into the gym with guys who can fight, these guys will twist you up and can take you down like nothing. They do what they want with you.”

Training daily with professional fighters such as Crisp and former World Extreme Cagefighting light heavyweight champion Doug Marshall made Aguirre want to test himself in the cage.

“I would go to these local MMA shows and then I started to get the itch; I wanted to fight too,” he said. “I thought I was good. I had done well in some street fights, but when you start learning martial arts it’s like another world.”

Aguirre received that opportunity after 14 months of training almost every day with his coach Tom Owens.

The first fight

The Gladiator Challenge held on March 12, 2005, at Eagle Mountain Casino in Porterville hosted Aguirre’s first professional fight. He remembers knowing he was being set up to fail by the event organizers when they put him up against Porterville’s own Francisco Romero.

Romero came into the fight with a 4-3 record, but more importantly, much more cagefighting experience.

“He was the guy they were favoring and he was supposed to win,” said Aguirre, who was going to make $100 for a loss and $300 for the win.

Neither of those happened.

After two five-minute rounds, the 170-pound match was called a majority draw. Aguirre was given $300 for the tie and made another $1,000 on ticket sales.

“After the fight I was so happy and relieved that I didn’t get knocked out, submitted or humiliated in front of 1,500 people,” he said. “It was a big relief. I performed, I didn’t lose and I thought I won.”

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That fight, which was considered to be the Fight of the Night by MMA website Sherdog.com, turned out to be the only fight of his career.

An armbar during jiu-jitsu practice days later resulted in ligament damage to his elbow. Aguirre decided to hang up the gloves.

“While I was in a sling, I was still going to support my teammates at their fights, and that’s when I started my business in 2005,” said Aguirre, who was given the nickname Batman as a kid because of the birthmark on the left side of his face. “At my fight I was wearing a T-shirt we had made in Visalia that said ‘Central Valley Martial Arts’ with the Batman logo and blank shorts. We didn’t have any branded stuff, there was no MMA store. The only place you could get it was online.”

Local MMA shows were the only place locally where fight fans could purchase their favorite fighter’s gear.

“That’s what sparked the idea,” he said. “I was injured and couldn’t train but I still wanted to be part of the sport, and the wheels started turning from there.”

Getting into the business

That first bulk purchase was made after an MMA event at the Tachi Palace Hotel and Casino in Lemoore.

Aguirre spoke to Tapout co-founder Dan Caldwell about selling their MMA clothing in Visalia and the two made an arrangement. Caldwell would sell shirts to Aguirre at half the price.

Shirts were being sold for $20 at the event.

“I had $200 in my pocket so I bought 20 shirts. Once I had the 20 shirts, on the way out to the car people started to hit me up because I had this big box of Tapout shirts and then people started buying them,” he said. “I thought man, this is going to do well. I took them home and started letting family know and then they were gone.”

His home became his showroom and he came prepared to the next event to purchase even more shirts. Friends and teammates would come purchase shirts at his house, but with a single rule: They each had to spend at least $100.

One box turned to four and four to eight. Aguirre eventually had dozens of boxes and didn’t want to have to open each one if purchases weren’t going to be made.

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World of Sports at the Visalia Mall was next.

Aguirre began to sell the Tapout shirts along with other brands at the card show held every couple of months. It was a place where it wasn’t just about selling to friends and family, for the first time he had access to the public.

“Once I started making money, I started contacting companies through email to tell them I had this thing going and I was interested in selling their product. Everyone was really cool and they would give me wholesale accounts,” he said. “That first weekend we made about $4,000. It was crazy, we almost sold everything we had. We did really well.”

Aguirre credits some of his success to the contacts he has made with MMA clothing founders. The business soon expanded to selling at local MMA events.

It was a $13,000 credit card from the United Parcel Service that allowed Aguirre to begin thinking about opening a storefront, and in June 2008 it happened. The first location opened behind Pep Boys on Mooney Boulevard.

Today, the store is successful at the Sequoia Mall, a site where many stores have failed. It can be found in a corner spot near numerous vacant locations.

Cheap rent and loyal customers have kept the store there.

“The big difference is this mall is really relaxed,” he said. “We’re making money. I’m able to man the store by myself. I don’t have to pay anybody. I know my business more than anyone else.”

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